


stars are not wanted now

by bibliocratic



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Failed Ritual, Hurt/Comfort, Injury, M/M, Reconciliation, post watcher's crown
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-14
Updated: 2019-09-14
Packaged: 2020-10-18 12:40:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,473
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20639321
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bibliocratic/pseuds/bibliocratic
Summary: Martin comes to three quiet realisations as he hears the damp voice calling out his name next to him. Each of them swells with a stricken immobile rage that peaks in the centre of him, and then crashes fruitless on the empty shores within him. Because of course that’s how this would end. He's always quietly known this, if he's being honest with himself.





	stars are not wanted now

**Author's Note:**

> There are archive/content warnings attached to this work - see end note for more details.

Martin’s throat is packed with must and dirt. For a moment, he does nothing. His ears ringing with a repeating impact signal, and briefly, he’s glad the TNT went off OK, that it’s over, and that twirling twisting enormity rouses him to comprehending, because it’s finally, finally over, after everything. The dust is beginning to settle now.

There is light from somewhere, poking through gaps and nooks in torn-up brickwork and shredded architecture, and it touches the landscape with distaste, makes the shadows creak bigger out of spite.

“Martin?”

A voice to his right.

Martin comes to three quiet realisations as he hears the damp voice next to him. Each of them swells with a stricken immobile rage that peaks in the centre of him, and then crashes fruitless on the empty shores within him. Because of course that’s how this would end. 

The first is that Jon is next to him. A gully between their crooked bodies, where they splay on the uneven mountains of fallen masonry the cave-in has made as altars for them. His ruined sightless eyes searching him out, the fresh marks dark, bleeding sluggish and pitch in the low light, a weak hand following scout, trying to reach for him, to find him as the only anchor that has ever held him steadfast. And it is, Martin realises, tears rising to make slow trains down his cheeks, it is Jon now, wholly, entirely; not the Archivist, not Becoming any more, all his eyes all fused and closed and his human body tossed away rag-doll by the blast. His skin gone white in patches with the talc of the rubble, like the face paint of some carnivalesque ghoul.

The second; Jon is dying. Concrete, unyielding chunks and splinters of a broken room pressing him into place, making ruined foundations of his shattered ribs, his broken legs. There are wheezing noises when he breathes, like a gap in a window in a high wind.

The third realisation creeps up on Martin with a soft ‘oh’. Loosens the inside of him that has spent so long struggling, allows it to go limp without shame. He isn’t surprised, really.

“I’m here,” he says, and his voice does not betray him. He’s lying on his back, but he turns his head, tries to shift his body without screaming. He moves his hand out, and when it comes into contact, Jon clutches around his thumb with his fist like a life-raft. His smile is tremulous, hard-won.

“The ambulance will be here s – ” Martin starts, trying to be gentle, but Jon tightens his grip ever so kindly, shakes his head.

“I don’t think I’ll be waiting around for that,” he says, and it’s almost light-hearted in the face of what they both know is now inevitable. Maybe Jon made his peace with this ending a long time ago. Martin wishes he’d had time to ask.

Jon touches his bottom lip with his tongue, and then: “You – will you stay? Until the ambulance comes?”

It’s faltering. Hesitant to over-step, unsure if he’s earned the right, as though even now Martin might push him away.

Jon is asking not to die alone, and Martin can give him that. All those unnoticed or unwanted gifts Martin tried to give in those early days, the stammering small-talk, the reams of tea. This is the one thing Jon’s asked him for that he can give with the rest of him.

“Course,” he says, and he rubs the ridge of Jon’s hand with his thumb. “I’ll… I’ll stay right here, OK.”

“Just until…” Jon stops, breathes, the sound rattling pinball in his chest. “Just until.”

“I’ll stay right here,” Martin repeats. “You won’t be alone.”

They say nothing for a long while. Something shifts above them, and Jon groans, and Martin shushes him, holding him tighter. He doesn’t say 'it’s OK’ because that is not true.

“I’m here,” he says instead. “I’m here, Jon. I’m here.”

“Sorry,” Jon pants out, and there’s grief smearing great lines on his face, pulled into grotesquery by the ash and dirt. “You wanted me safe. Guess I - I uh let you down again.”

“You can make it up to me,” Martin replies, a gentle tease deliberately pitched, and he’s rewarded by Jon’s lips unconsciously curling into a smile. “Buy me dinner.”

He doesn’t think he’s ever seen Jon smile like that. Look at him like that. Maybe, he thinks with a hollow regret, maybe he wasn’t looking properly.

“I would have… would’ve really liked to.” Jon winces, gasps as something moves, grinds down. “Martin, I should have… I never told you…”

“It’s… It’s OK. I know,” Martin replies, and he threads their fingers together. Jon closes their grip so their palms touch, a fist made between them. And they don’t need to say anything else.

It’s not where he would have chosen, Martin supposes, but it is peaceful. Not quiet, because all this time and it turns out Jon had so much he wanted to say and he’s refusing to let mortal injury get in the way. Words dribbling over his lips with the blood, dredging them up like something buried in a tight and jealous ground, an undergrowth borne of self-defence and fear that he’s now hacking away at, pulling up their roots with a breathless intensity. Some of them are re-runs of old wounds he’s worrying into twinging again – regrets, losses, ill-made sacrifices that still sit uneasily – but most of his tumbling pain-shot words are about Martin. Hopes and wishes for the future – now you’re free from all this, Jon says bitterly with a self-effacing twist to his face. Jon wants him to be happy. To live a long life; to surround himself with people who see him for the marvel he is, to try and remember him, if not kindly, then honestly. And Martin listens, and strokes Jon’s hand and bites his own lip when the pain crests, and lies as easily as breathing, over and over again.

There was a time when Martin would have done anything for Jon. And it is not that this has changed, but it’s matured. Become realistic, independent of Jon in many ways. But it’s not that. It’s just that Martin can’t fulfil these promises. To live a long life, to move out of London, to settle down, to learn who he is outside of this place. Not with the girder smashed over his pelvis, the rebar standing at a jaunty angle through his shoulder, just below his lungs.

Martin had already decided he was going to stay with Jon for the rest of his very short life. It’s just come a bit early, that’s all.

They talk, in those final minutes. And Jon doesn’t complain of the pain, not once, doesn’t turn bitter or angry or morose, rage that his last moments are sightless, in an unforgiving dark. This version of Jon, this slower, calmer man, does not match the version Martin knew when he shook Peter Lukas’ hand and committed himself to the Lonely. But his version was never right was it? Too many revisions, a mental collage of a man made up of who Martin saw through the filters of his own sense of inadequacy, failings, his expectations of what the world would give him. But it was an unfair phantom, that Jon that Martin carried a torch for. That Jon was unattainable, something to be viewed, longed for at a distance. This Jon has a soft, sad smile, and tells Martin all the pried up secrets he’d latched in his chest. This Jon is holding Martin’s hand, and his breathing is slower now, and all he wants is for Martin to live, grow old away from here and find someone who could have loved him better than Jon could.

This Jon Martin could have built a life with.

Martin’s face is wet. And he is already missing this easy roll of chatter when Jon will finally quiet, his labours finally at end, because it’s daft, isn’t it, to miss something that was barely even a something, a something aborted by time and choices, something never given the chance to become.

Martin wonders if they’ll find their bodies when they’ve cleared all this away.

It’s quiet down here. Quiet and getting quieter. Jon is losing the threads of his conversation, Martin squeezing his hand to rouse him blearily back, selfishly wanting a few more moments. The sucking inhale getting worse, the intervals longer, slower. It is not what Martin would have chosen. He has chosen so little in his life, he supposes.

Jon’s hand is soft in his. There are spots in front of Martin’s eyes, but he keeps following the dirt-encrusted lines of Jon’s face, trying to memorise it before his sight trickles dark. Wonders how it all could have gone differently.

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings for: major character death, mild descriptions of injuries.
> 
> Come say hello on [tumblr](https://bibliocratic.tumblr.com)! And feel free to send some jonmartin prompts my way (angsty, fluffy or otherwise!)


End file.
